India says Accra Climate change talks may end in a bloody battle

With the next round of international climate change negotiations set to start from Thursday in Accra, Ghana, enough signals have emerged that the talks may not make any substantial headway.

But it could see sparks fly with India out to stub any attempts by Japan, EU and US to firm up an agenda against it and China. Speaking to TOI , Yvoe De Boer, the man in the hot seat as the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said, "It would be difficult to discuss national targets (for GHG gas reductions) before the next US administration is in place."

While developed countries already have targets under the Kyoto Protocol, the compact's first phase is to expire in 2012 and the rich countries want developing countries like India to also take on commitments. Long term goals too are to be set this time around. But India would be wary about Trojan horses that Japan and other countries have been launching at the negotiations. Japan had earlier floated the idea of "sectoral targets" - mandatory emission or energy reduction targets for heavy energy-consuming industries against international benchmarks — which India and others had strongly opposed.

Ghana is set to host the next bout on this. Hinting so much, Boer said, "The reluctance (against the sectoral approach) has a more political origin and a substantive one."

Hinting that India and China would be under tremendous pressure to make some compromise by the time negotiations end, Boer said India already had a domestic climate change action plan which talked of an enhanced efficiency mission as well as a solar energy mission. "We have to see if that is something that can be captured as a sectoral approach (under the UN convention)," he added. He also pointed out that India was a signatory to the US-coordinated ‘Asia Pacific partnership on clean development and climate' and was already approaching the issue in a similar sectoral fashion.

But several Indian negotiators, wishing to remain anonymous, reacted strongly to his statements claiming it reinstated the growing impression that the UN climate change secretariat was acting in a partisan manner and pushing developed countries' agenda.

"Why should a UN official be commenting on what India should commit to or not or possible outcomes. Earlier too, at Bali in December, key developing countries had complained about a bias in the secretariat," a senior official told TOI .

With verbal duels starting off even before the talks begin, it's likely that the Accra talks would turn into another bloody but inconclusive battle setting the tone for the high-level meet in Poland at the end of the year.